CS GO Tutorial – Making your first map

The first step is to actually play the game. I can’t stress how important this is, and not because it’s a good game. Doing this ensures that everything is fully loaded and set up for making maps with. To get into the editor, you go to the ‘library’ tab in Steam, click on ‘all games’, and choose ‘tools’. Go down to ‘Counter Strike: Global Offensive SDK’, click ‘nextnextnextnext…finished’ then once it’s downloaded, double-click on it and choose ‘Hammer World Editor’. Well done! The level I am about to make is the simplest that will work in Counter Strike GO. It will consist of a hollow cube with at least one spawn point for each team inside. The reason for the hollow cube is that it stops the nothingness from outside the level from getting in. Think of it as space, where you can’t have a hole in the space-craft, no matter how small.

If there is a hole in your map, you get a leak, and this causes all sorts of problems. A spawn point is needed in any level, as these are the places your character starts from at the beginning of each round. Now I’m going to make the level. Once Hammer has loaded, go up to ‘File’ and click ‘New’. This makes a new map. Get into good habits, go up to ‘File’, and save the map as it is. I’m choosing the name ‘firstmap’. Now let’s make the hollow cube. Go up to ‘Browse’, and choose the texture that you want to use. I’m using this one. Once you’ve done this, go across to the ‘block tool’ and select it. This lets you make blocks in your level. Drag out a square like so, adjust the height if you want to, and once you’re happy, press ‘Enter’ to make it. To view the map so far, move the mouse over the top left screen and press ‘Z’. Or ‘Zee’. Move around with WASD and the mouse. You’ll see it’s in wireframe at the moment.

To change this, click on ‘Camera’ and choose ‘3D Textured Shaded Polygons’. Great, we now have a block. To make it hollow, go up to ‘tools’ and click ‘make hollow’. I choose the value ‘-32’ as it then hollows outwards. Move the mouse over the top left screen again and press ‘Z’. I’ve moved the camera inside the block so we can see inside the level. Next, I’m going to make the spawnpoints in the level.

To do this, click on the ‘Entity Tool’ on the left hand side of the screen, and click in the level where you want the characters to spawn. I have made two spawn points: one for terrorist, and one for counter-terrorist. By default, they are all for terrorists. To change this, click on the ‘Selection Tool’ like so, and double-click on the one you wish to change.

Choose ‘info_player_counterterrorist’. Apply, now if you move the camera up close you’ll be able to see the model. Doesn’t he look nice. To play the game, click on the ‘Run map’ button or press ‘F9’. Click ‘Okay’ and it will render your map. Once your map has finished rendering, load up ‘Counter Strike GO’ and go to the options menu. Make sure that the ‘Developer Console’ is set to ‘yes’. Now press the ‘console button’ on your keyboard, and type in the name of your map. Click ‘Submit’ and wait for your map to load. Choose a team, and you should be able to play the level. Sure, it’s simple, and there are some graphical glitches- due to the lighting- but they’re simple to fix, and think of the possibilities. Have fun..